1 1i \ tf : : EP __ "'-I ------------ 7 /' -- THE NEW YOR.KER adjacent pictures com- paring the meagre shab- biness of some institu- tion a hundred years earlier with its present great size and splendor. In the case of this year's Metropolitan Opera centennial, such side- by-side pictures show the grand lives of New Yorkers-some New Yorkers-in 1883 and the grand lives of some \ New Yorkers today. However, partly because of what seemed to be the imminence of another bad depression, a larger share than usual of 1983' s anniversary com- memorations marked events that happened fif- ty rather than a hun- dred years earlier. The celebrations last March 4th of the fiftieth an- niversary of the Pres- idential Inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, with their op- portunity to show pictures from both 1933 and 1983 of soup kitchens and long lines of jobless Americans, were, of course, far more welcome to Demo- crats than to Republicans. "The analogy to today, though certainly not perfect, is most disconcerting," Cuomo said at a March 4th ceremony in Hyde Par k. There is considerable evidence that if it hadn't been for the rumor of a coming depression the season on local stages, at least, would have been far sparser than it was. Numerous theatri- cal figures seem to have concluded that audiences, particularly in the city, would be in an almost perfect mood for a reprise of hard times in the thirties. At the Kool Jazz Festival, a "Hard Times, Good Times" concert featured Depression songs. The message, ex- plained Studs Terkel, who presided over the concert, was that, in that era, people sang not only "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" and "Ten Cents a Dance" but also such cheery numbers as "Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries," and that the warm camaraderie of peo- ple working and laughing together somehow got them through the bad times. This year also brought a revival of "The Cradle Will Rock," Marc Blitzstein's opera about the struggle of unemployed workers, which had pre- mièred when the Depression was at its o ;:- 45 þ " v c...:> - (/ /{- Tu f/L "I want to talk to you, Thompson, colonel to colonel." . worst. Though the fear of a new Great Depression has petered out, some of the shows that seem to have been in- spired by nostalgia for that painful era are still making a cheerful jingle at the box office. There is the revival of "On Your Toes," first produced in 1936, which deals with the ups and downs of a member of a local vaudeville family working for the W.P.A. There is "Brighton Beach Memoirs," Neil Si- mon's tender and funny, partly auto- biographical comedy about a second- generation Jewish-immigrant extend- ed family rising above the Depression in Brooklyn, even as it braces itself to make room for more relatives-part of another wave of immigration that changed the city: the refugees from Hitler's Germany. And there is the revival of "You Can't Take It with You," Kaufman and Hart's 1936 comic account of the survival of an upper-Manhattan extended family, made up in this case not only of rela- tives but also of people who just hap- pen by and stay and an immigrant- no doubt in her case one should say "émigrée" - Russian grand duchess. This Depression-times play-which ends with the cast linking hands across the stage and singing "Goodnight, Sweetheart," with its promise that sleep will banish sorrow-affected two local critics in diametrically opposite ways. Since Clive Barnes moved from . the Times to the Post six years ago, his reviews have generally been so benign that, according to one ru- mor, " 'Fabulous!' -Clive Barnes, the Post" is a stock slug, kept routinely at the ready by theatrical ad writers. Of "You Can't Take It with You," Barnes said, "The lovability of every- one-even the sour, old, money-grub- bing capitalist-is sickening. These people don't have a mean bone in their bodies." On the same day, the often acerbic Frank Rich, at the Times, concluded his review with "It's no easy thing to leave the festivities at the Plymouth to face the ruder life that lies in wait outside." The 1983 hard-times-good-times balance tipped favorably at City Hall. Last January, the Mayor announced that because of prospective shortfalls the city faced a five-hundred-and- eighty-million-dollar deficit for the coming fiscal year and would have to reduce the number of employees by more than eleven thousand, including over four thousand actual layoffs. A local cartoon showed Koch appearing before the State Legislature dressed as a bum, asking "Got a dimer" Cuomo urged the legislators to do whatever they could for the city, on the ground that it had the largest number of poor people: remember the neediest. Then, at the end of the city's 1983 fiscal year, last June 30th, the city turned out to